Catfish sent me this interesting video.
I also love the background music from Last of the Mohicans. One of the guys from the January pickin' party down in South Georgia can play this on keyboard or accordian.
I can attest to the technology issues. When I started working on mainframes back in the late 70's they were big and they were water cooled. They had multiple boxes, which we called frames, bolted together. They had two separate frames, one to handle water distribution and the other to handle power distribution. Each generation was more powerful than the previous generation. In the late 90's IBM achieved a breakthrough and went from bi-polar to CMOS technology. Now the large mainframes were air cooled and a lot smaller. What used to require 7 frames bolted together went to 2 frames that were twice as fast and had more memory. When I left, our main processor was just one frame that was four times faster than the two processors we replaced and had four times the memory.
The computer I'm on right now is faster and has more memory than the first water cooled processor I was trained on, the IBM 3033. Back then mainframe memory cost about $1 million per megabyte. Our first 3033 at MacAuto only had four megabytes of memory. My PC has 512 megabytes. Microsoft's new operating system, Vista, requires one gigabyte.
The rapid changes in technology screws the federal gummint as well. For example, the FAA was upgrading their computer system in the mid '80's. They decided to go with IBM 3083 processors. By the time they had gone through the planning and procurement processes and started purchasing the 3083s, they were already obsolete. IBM was still manufacturing them but at installation time, IBM had rolled out the 3090 series of mainframes which were cheaper, more powerful, and used less power. The gummint would be better off leasing technology.
I remember having to take a call at the Army Records Center in St. Louis in the early 80's. They were running IBM 360 processors. Those computers were real dionosaurs by then. They were three generations back from the current processors.
I have a friend whose 80 something parents just bought a PC. They're game and they try real hard, but they are having all sorts of problems. Ten years ago, you could see people who had VCR's with blinking clocks 'cause the people didn't know how to program the clock. I have to hand it to my mother. She was in her 80's and her clock never blinked. All of her friends only used the VCR to play movies. My mother actually used hers to record stuff. Jimbo even admitted to placing tape over his VCR clock so he wouldn't see it blinking.
Technology is on the move. My sister and I both worked in data processing. She was a programmer her entire career. I started in hardware, taught hardware, moved to programming, taught programming, and spent the last six years of my career as a fulltime systems programmer. I had to have someone set up this website for me.
I have a cellphone that I'm thinking of replacing. When I do, I'm gonna get one with no whistles and bells. KISS. I don't need a camera in it. I just want to make and receive calls.
Here's the bad thing. I don't have any children. That means I don't have any grandchildren. Who is gonna help me cope with technology in 10 years when I'm 70 and I'm a doddering old fool? (No remarks about how I'm already a doddering old fool.)
I'm doomed!
Posted by denny at February 22, 2007 01:52 PMSo, to continue the "old" game - how about starting computing career on USAF IBM FSQ-7 SAGE computers for NORAD active air defense - duplexed tube computer that occupied a complete floor in a 4-story block house. 3 megawatt power station out back that provided 1 megawatt to run the computer, 1 megawatt to run lights/etc, and 1 megawatt to cool it down (even in Duluth, MN). Christmas highlight was the programmer running stack of punch cards to play "Jingle Bells" on 2" speaker in the control room. Hollywood bought the control room hardware from scrapped Syracuse, NY facility for "Time Travel" TV show, so that in the early 70's we would get off work and hit the boob tube in the dayroom, and see the entire control area (console, tape deck drives the size of refrigerators, etc) that we had just left.
Posted by: JWMcDonald on February 22, 2007 03:17 PMHeh! Heh! Heh! We used to kid some of the older CE's at IBM that they had it easy in the old days. They just turned out the lights and looked to see which tubes were not lit. One of the guys I worked with worked on the SAGE project when he first started with IBM.
Posted by: Denny on February 22, 2007 03:29 PMVery interesting presentation. Has some hints of anti-Americanism, but didn't harp on it. Wonder if the facts are accurate and true. The comments that scare and confuse me. The employer/employee relationship. People not working in any one place for a long time. I personally believe this is the root cause of a lot of our problems in today's society from school age children to the entitlement crowd as adults. It bothers me mostly because I don't know whose more at fault, the companies, that seem to not give a rats ass about the employees because of their shareholders wants and desires, or the current slack ass atitude that many bring to work with them with no "loyalties" to the companies they work for anymore. Anyone got any opinions on who "dropped the ball"?
Posted by: Ray on February 22, 2007 06:08 PMI'll help, but my shift is only for 6 months, then someone else has to take over.
I was at the front end of the IBM1050-II in the 60's when I was in the AF. Al Gore must have been TDY from his reporters job in Nam and actually missed the intro to the internet. We would sit around and send messages to and from our desks and think nothing about what we were the forfront of. I retired from the AF in 81 and after many upgrades that damn monstrocity was still humming. After the cold war was over, it was divulged that the Ruskies were forever trying to figure out our logistics. The 1050-II was a great computer aparatus that shortened our supply and demands in the AF. God bless IBM.
Posted by: gene Hall on February 22, 2007 08:27 PMIntel giveth. Microsoft taketh away.
Posted by: Ralph Gizzip on February 22, 2007 09:27 PMWhen I started in the IT field, part of the training was wiring the boards for the 407 Accounting Machine and the collator, the sorter, etc. I worked in the Pentagon down in the sub basement and we had 3 1401's and a 7080, The 1401's had 4K and 16K memory and the 7080 had 160K memory. We did the payroll for the US Army at the Pentagon on the 4K 1401 using punched cards. That machine did not even have tape drives.
My next transfer was to another Army installation which had an IBM 7044 with 16 tape drives.
Then I went to work for SBC (then owned by IBM) where we had an IBM 360. I remember when we had a general come through for a presentation. After the presentation we photographed him and had him look like he was pushing the button. The button we showed him with was the emergency one that would really screw up the computer.
The computer field was a lot of fun in those days. We had to invent almost everything we did as there were not many software packages. Some of the things we did with those old machines were fascinating in the way we figured out how to do things. Good times and good people to work with. Now there are just too many Boomers in the field and they took all the fun out of it.
Posted by: dick on February 22, 2007 11:30 PMWhen I joined the Military they had the DAS3 which required an entire semi ttrailer to haul and had less capacity than my first PC.
Ray, I see kids today who go through three jobs a year. The turn over rate at Allorica where a friend is a trainer is staggering.
By age 38 I'd held six jobs if you count the farmers I worked for as a kid, otherwise, two.
Now contrast what we know is happening with the predictions in Revelation and ask yourself how John could have know what he wrote in 70 AD.
Ah, memories. I shut down a Mac vs PC vs Amiga argument when they asked my opinion: "I grew up with mainframes. If it ain't watercooled, it ain't a real computer."
Used to confound the folks at at the local mac User Group when I referred to the old days "when we had to spell DOS."
My parents just bought a pc a few months ago. Dad is a guy who taught himself a lot about radios and electronics, but he's constantly worried he'll do something and the thing will blow up. And Mom won't even touch it.
Posted by: Firehand on February 23, 2007 09:33 PMI remember learning DOS on weekends at the laundramat. Now, I'm a lazy 'script kiddy' who can barely nav my own pathetic myspace space...
Big Den, in ten years from now I'm sure that you will still have us; your faithful readers. ;)
BTW, I tried to buy a basic cell phone without a camera and ended up with some goofy bottom of the line phone-it has mp3 and video etc. My advice?Just look for one with big buttons. Argh.
I had a job as a computer operator for Best Products in the early 80's. We had two Honeywell mainframes and an Amsdahl (spell?) one in a separate room. The Honeywell would be slower than the Amsdahl, but in terms of ruggedness, there was no comparison.
Heavens, I had forgotten about that. I took computer programming at my local community college; despite having a 3.85 grade average, I was told that, since my Wolfe test scores showed that my thought processes were intuitive rather than logical, that I wouldn't make a good programmer. I gave up and went back to what I was good at, secretarial work. Had children to feed.
Haven't regretted it for the most part, except I met my ex-husband at Best Products. That, I regret loads.
Elizabeth
Imperial Keeper
I don't have anything to add.I just enjoyed reading this.
Posted by: Tom on February 27, 2007 09:13 PM